Words, language, editing

#Diagramming challenge No. 2 (sentence and answer)

For our second sentence to diagram, we’ll stay fairly simple — no compounds or subordinate clauses — but we’ll pile up a few more modifiers and have an imperative verb:

Scene from “The Wizard of Oz”

We again have a subject-verb-object structure, with modifiers. Imperatives (command verbs) have the understood subject “you,” because you’re directly telling someone to do something. It’s not spoken, so it goes in parentheses in the location where it belongs, the subject. Indirect-object prepositional phrases (to/for phrases that indicate the recipient of a direct object) hang down from the main verb. The prepositional phrase “behind the curtain” can function either adverbially (where?) or adjectivally (which one?); here it’s modifying “man,” so it drops down from that noun.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”:

I hope you’re getting more confident about diagramming! We’ll try another one soon.